Modern commercial airplanes include numerous avionics display systems and electronic control systems. The use of such systems is regulated and approved by various governmental authorities around the world. Such systems are classified by these regulatory authorities according to the hazard level presented to an aircraft in flight if a system fails. As an example, a system might be certified as a “Level A” certified system if failure of the system would be very serious or catastrophic. A system might be classified as a “Level D” certified system if failure of the system would present a minor hazard that could be dealt with reasonably by a properly trained and alert crew. Level B certified systems and Level C certified systems fall between these two extremes.
Some systems on an aircraft, such as an electronic flight bag (EFB) may not be certified. These systems are typically those added by or for a specific airline and are not part of the basic, factory-provided flight systems. A governmental authority also gives approval for these systems to be used operationally during flight but there are less stringent design requirements because a failure of one of these systems has no impact on the safety of flight. The result is an easier path to iterate the design and evolve the functionality over time without the requirement of an expensive re-certification effort. Many of these uncertified systems provide supplemental information to the crew, such as dispatch routing, planning and payload information.
Over the past decade, there has been a significant shift in how such information is consumed on the flight deck. Manuals, flight plans, charting information, performance tables, etc. that assist the flight crews in performing their overall mission but are not critical to the operation of the airplane were provided in paper form for many years. However, in the current technological and economic environment, flexible, uncertified, tablet-based computing systems are being used to provide this information to pilots. Such a system is referred to as a portable electronic device (PED) based EFB. This format allows airlines to more easily realize the weight and handling cost savings associated with eliminating paper-based information. In order to be used during all phases of flight, however, these PED-based EFB systems must be securely mounted in the flight deck. Unfortunately, in some flight decks, there is not sufficient space or a suitable location to mount a PED for easy viewing and interaction. In addition, it is sometimes difficult to position a tablet computer for shared viewing or convenient viewing alongside flight deck multifunction displays resulting in more difficult crew coordination reducing the overall usability of the PED-based EFB information.